Being Somewhat of a Ghost Story
by sonofon
Summary: In which Mizuki forces the St. Rudolph team to practice on Christmas Day, and three ghosts - who just so happen to look like the Fuji siblings - attempt to persuade him otherwise. Written for HaveYouNoMercy.


_**Fic written for the Pointless but Original Talking Forum Holiday Fic Exchange.**_**  
Request Number:** 04**  
Genre: **Anything fluffy or cracky, really**  
Squicks/Turn Offs in Fic: **Horror, large doses of angst and dying**  
What You'd Like to See in Fic:** Humour, Romance, possible Gen, maybe Crack?**  
Gen/Het/Slash/Smut/None/All-of-the-above?:** Totally all of the above (wait no, not smut) =D but mostly slash**  
Request: **If possible, I'd like a parody of the classic screwball story A Christmas Carol. Obviously though, not with the same jazz as the Charles Dickens version. Maybe a modern one, with Mizuki of St. Rudolf insisting that none of the tennis players of the team get to go home for Christmas and instead have to stay out practicing tennis, snow or sleet be damned? And then perhaps instead of the ghosts there are just three very... concerned siblings (coughFujicough) who try to persuade him to change his mind? The casting and twists are up to you. All I'm asking for is a cracky parody of Scrooge and a wonderful Christmas story. =D**  
Beta**: EternalAngel, thank you for putting up with my lateness and just tons thanks for you for pointing out my mistakes.

**A/N//Message to receiver: **The OC is not mine; rather belongs to dear ezylrybbit and I'm sorry because I was going to ask you for permission, but then I forgot and by then it was too late, but. .___. Hope I haven't messed up Toru _too_ much, and if I have, just let me know and I'll, uh, try and right that wrong. And for HaveYouNoMercy, I present this poor attempt at crack, yet I still hope you somehow enjoy it? Happy New Year, daughter-mine~.

--

A long, long time ago, when Mizuki Hajime was young with his innocence still intact, he made a friend out of a mysterious transfer student. This is how he lost his innocence.

He and Kim Toru were not friends in the traditional sense. That is, they did not share a mutual interest on which their friendship was gradually built upon; rather they were friends simply because they found no reason to hate each other. Mizuki was already being ostracized for his increasingly eccentric fashion sense; Toru, on the other hand, was frequently gone with his odd trips to Turkey and it was said that he was 'strange,' whatever that meant. It can be said for the both of them that the foundation of character was laid early without much variance to this date.

Sometimes, Mizuki couldn't help but think his friend was strange. It was just not normal for a boy to be going to Turkey _that_ often; and he had a penchant for disappearing for such odd intervals of time that it was difficult to keep up with class work until Toru simply decided not to do the work at all.

He knew a lot, too. Too much for a boy his age, but Mizuki was a willing enough participant; their friendship, though not budding, was at least not static.

But being young and perhaps still somewhat innocent, Mizuki did like to think of them as friends, and he liked to think that they could help one another and all that sort of idealistic thinking until the day Kim Toru reported absent—and did not come back. For all he knew, Toru was dead. The friendship ended after an idyllic nine months.

And Mizuki promptly forgot about him, as children are apt to do, and he himself turned his mind towards bigger and better things in the form of tennis, and later, the boys' tennis team at St. Rudolph where he became manager.

This is where the story begins.

--

"No," said Mizuki, and that was the end of that.

"But—" said Atsushi, and did his best impression of a pout.

"But—" tried Yanagisawa, but his pout fell short because his lips were already pouting on their own accord, and frankly, it was sad.

"But—" said Fuji Yuuta, who was only doing this because everyone said that Mizuki liked him and because Yanagisawa had promised him some reimbursement of the sort and that couldn't be too bad, right?

Mizuki looked at Yuuta. Still his final answer was the same: "No. Snow or sleet be damned. We _are_ going to have tennis practice tomorrow."

That day was December twenty-fourth, and on the next day, there was going to be tennis practice. Everyone else in the world was happily celebrating the holidays, going on vacation, eating until their stomachs spontaneously combusted—and they were going to play tennis.

It was one of those few times that they all dreaded putting on their tennis shoes.

"We should sign a petition," Yanagisawa said later in the locker room, "and _protest_ for our God-given rights. We should be allowed to have one day off." It was an impressive show, and he even managed to say it without sputtering. But by then, everyone had dropped into a state of despair so deep that no one heard him.

--

Mizuki Hajime tied his scarf around his neck and peered into the mirror. As always, he looked _fabulous_, and as he felt especially good, he blew a kiss to himself. Then he went upstairs to his room. His room was dark and he turned the light on. He'd never gotten over a slight (he maintained that it was _slight_) fear of the dark and so hated to be in a room that did not have light. It was not right. This was the twenty-first century, after all. It wasn't like they lived in the Stone Age anymore.

"Now why'd you have to go and do that? Jun-chan's going to wake up again." Sitting cross-legged on Mizuki's bed was a boy too pretty for his own good. He wore tight pants and a Bomber jacket. Inside was a low-cut shirt that prominently displayed beautiful collarbones. Mizuki was instantly struck, though he had at least the good sense not to show it.

"Apologize to Jun-chan," the boy said, holding up his owl puppet for Mizuki to see. Then he pouted (and promptly put Atsushi and Yanagisawa and Yuuta to shame) in a way that ought to be illegal. Mizuki gulped.

"You," said Mizuki, and backed against a wall. He pointed at the boy, his mind racing and reeling with thoughts as he tried to pinpoint a name to this strange individual in front of him. He could feel each drop of perspiration form on the back of his neck. "You!" he repeated for good measure.

The boy lazily uncrossed one sculpted leg and held it in front of him midair. He yawned. "Seven years since I last saw you and that's the best you can do? Honest to God, I'm disappointed. Even a third-rater in Istanbul is better." And Kim-Toru-who-was-supposed-to-be-dead-but-evidently-was-not stood up and yawned again. "Awfully disappointed," he said, though his voice sounded more like a purr. "And I took you for a sentimental. Imagine that." He gave Mizuki such a frank up and down look that Mizuki felt, for the second time in his life, that his mind had been stripped naked. It was not a good feeling.

Toru smirked.

"You," managed Mizuki, "you, you're not dead. But you should be. You never came back. You never finished your homework. Are you a ghost? Why do you haunt me? I'm a good citizen. I never did anything to you."

"Hmm," said Kim Toru. "You really haven't changed, have you? Only your fashion sense. It's gotten worse. Everything else"—he gave Mizuki another frank look—"is still the same. Ooh, yes."

"As if you're one to judge," Mizuki retorted, rising in the defense of his favorite knitted purple angora sweater. He looked derisively at the boy's low-cut shirt and Bomber jacket. Who wore Bomber jackets anyway? "_Harper's Bazaar_, November edition, page one hundred and twenty eight. The benefits of angora, specifically purple."

"Oh, now that's just really sad. Do you want me to set you up on a blind date? I think that might help, maybe. Unless you're hopeless already. This really nice girl that I've known since forever; she's really good. She'll do anything except, well—they don't want to risk getting preggo, you see."

Mizuki seethed and tried to look insulted.

"But I'm not here to start a battle about fashion. Aren't you interested at all why I'm here? Why I decided to come see, of all people, you? You should feel honored."

"Because you can never leave people alone, that's all. You never could. So please leave now."

"Ah, you think too highly of yourself. That's reserved solely for people I actually _like_." Mizuki feigned a look of hurt, but Toru, licking his thumb, continued: "I'll give you a clean, abridged version. I died. How I died is up to your imagination. If you have one, that is."

"Big surprise. Now get out before I scream for help."

"I died, but I didn't really die: take that one way or another; the point is, I went to Heaven. I met St. Peter, you know. The old man himself. He couldn't spell my name. Well, after he got it right, we found out that I'd been barred admittance to Heaven. I said why. He wouldn't clarify; just that for this and that vague reason I couldn't go in. Probably because of that whole marriage proposal with T—I know too much for my own good. _So_. Anyway, I asked to go to Hell. Why not? Better than being around boring people. But he wouldn't let me do that either. Finally he gave me a deal—even though I didn't ask for one in the first place—and it was this: seduce a fairy and I can go back to Earth. Nice, right? I don't fit in the Heaven mold and I don't fit in the Hell mold either. It's pretty, isn't it? Misery, I mean. It's a very nice thing, you know, to be miserable.

"So I said why not. Fairies are pretty and there's a bunch of them in Heaven, flying around and trying to look as if they're doing nothing at all, which takes quite a bit of work, you know. Took me a whole day, but look—the old man cheated! Feel me." He held out his arm. Mizuki looked as if he'd gone crazy.

"No, I'm being serious. Feel me. Don't worry, I'm not going to grope you. It's not like I can." He sounded very sad.

Mizuki only looked that much more scared.

"Aw, hell," and Toru swiped his arm at Mizuki. His arm went right through Mizuki's chest. He nearly screamed. "See? I'm a _ghost_. I can't be seen except by certain people and I can't feel anything at all. I can't eat and—ugh. I only have Jun-chan." He held the little owl puppet close to him.

"Get—get out," said Mizuki. "I don't care if you were once my friend, because surely I was mad at the time, I—"

"You _still_ think of yourself too highly, I see. Reality check, good sir: we weren't friends. Not ever." Toru's playful smile only served to infuriate him further.

"You—"

"Are going to shut up and listen, 'kay?" Toru sat on the bed and spread out his legs. "I've come to warn you that three other ghosts will be visiting you tonight. Normally, they'd space out the visits, but I guess they want to get it over with. They've got lives, too."

"Three others? Like you? For what? What'd I ever do, I—"

"You've made a very grievous mistake," said Toru, suddenly serious. "You're going to make the St. Rudolph regulars practice tomorrow, aren't you? There's a forecast of snow tonight that's going to continue into tomorrow. It's like, inhumane. Horrible. Unreasonable and all that dramatic shit. See? Jun-chan agrees with me." And sure enough, the owl was _chuckling_, if that was even possible.

"How's that any of your business what I do with my team?"

"It's _all_ of my business," said Toru. "I'm a ghost. And I'm letting you know that this is from the higher-ups. They're not happy. Especially the brother._ Oh_, the brother. He's the one who started the complaints. We got flooded with paperwork, which is completely _ew_, and I thankfully managed to get out of it." He smiled mysteriously.

"Brother?" Mizuki blanched.

"Yes," smiled Toru. "Do you see this?" He picked up the chains that were bound to his feet. "Look at them. Me. In chains. It's not some naughty bondage game, it's even _worse_. It's my fate to live with these chains until Those Up Above decide I've reformed enough to their satisfaction, the masochists. Or until my bitch-of-an-aunt pays them off, but the point remains. You can't go your whole life like this. You need to change, just like I do—supposedly, anyway. Hey, I'm just the messenger. Or you'll end up like this. Or worse. Am I scaring you?"

"All this just because there's tennis practice tomorrow?"

"They will vicariously show you the past, the present, and the future. You'll change. I should know." Inside his jacket, Jun-chan made a noise but Toru hushed him. "It's sort of like growing up, only less painful. You'll see."

"Those chains—do they hurt?"

"Eh, you get used to it. You can get used to anything. Anyway, I'll be going now. I've got to go meet some other people—unfinished business, if you know what I mean, so I'll leave you to your ghosts. Merry Christmas, I suppose." And just like that, the boy called Kim Toru disappeared into thin air.

Mizuki sank to the ground. He was not quite sure what to make of it all. Eventually, he decided that he didn't want to make anything of it, but by then, the first ghost had appeared, and he looked very similar to someone Mizuki knew all too well for him to be thinking anything else. He couldn't. He felt an overwhelming urge to quote one Ebenezer Scrooge.

--

A willowy form crept behind him. Though Mizuki could not see clearly, he could make out the faintest of silhouettes. He saw a brown head of hair and a long dark cloak.

"Are you the first spirit? Come out so I can see you," he said, trying to sound more courageous than he really was feeling.

"Indeed," said the ghost in a soft and gentle voice.

And Fuji Syuusuke stepped out into Mizuki's room.

Terror and pure dismay were no mere words to describe Mizuki's state of mind at the moment the brunette genius of Seigaku stepped out of the closet and onto the carpeted floor.

"Hello," said the ghost of Fuji Syuusuke, and Mizuki could quite honestly admit that he was scared shitless. His face turned white and he pointed at a ghost out of a combination of shock and horror.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," the ghost smiled. "I'm not really Fuji Syuusuke, though we do look remarkably similar. Well, that's actually debatable, but that's not the point. The point is—"

"Get out, get out!" cried Mizuki, but the ghost that looked eerily like Fuji Syuusuke only stared at him passively.

"I will not. I've come to show you something and you're going to come see it with me. The past. We will journey to the past and you will learn something wonderful. Is that how humans say it? Wonderful. We _will_ have fun."

"Whose past?"

"Yours."

"What is there in my past to see?" Mizuki demanded. It was then that he noticed that the ghost had gripped his arm in a very tight hold. He struggled, but the ghost was strong than he let on. "Let me go, I tell you. My uncle is the superintendent of the city police, you know."

"Ooh, an uncle's little boy, are you? Pitiful," said the ghost. "No one but you can see me, so mentioning your uncle is a bit of a waste, unfortunately."

"Who are you, really? Why are you here? What are you going to do to me?"

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past," said the ghost, "and come on, we're behind schedule." The ghost held one cloaked sleeve in front of him and a dark, moving porthole appeared. "This way, my boy," he said, and pushed Mizuki in.

Mizuki fell on his bottom and he stood up as quickly as possible so as to not dirty his favorite pair of black skinny pants. Because skinny pants were _very_ fashionable this year, and Mizuki was always in the vogue. Oh, yeah.

There was snow around them. Glistening, pristine, white snow. But somehow he'd turned transparent in the midst of time traveling and his feet merely sank through without getting wet. It at once thrilled and disconcerted him.

The ghost (but Mizuki kept thinking of him as Fuji, damn him) seemed to be looking for someone. Finally, he pointed and said: "Up ahead. There's the tennis court."

Mizuki's ears perked up. He turned in the direction and saw a boy not more than five years old. "Hey, that's me," he whispered. "What am I doing here—hey."

"Watch," said the ghost, and Mizuki watched his five-year-old self pick up tennis balls on a snow-strewn court all by himself. The five-year-old Mizuki wore a gaudy multi-colored sweater ("I got it from my mother," remembered Mizuki) and snow boots. He kept picking up the balls by himself. It was a damned touching scene. Mizuki could feel the tears building up.

Once he'd gathered all the balls, he set them into a basket. Then he went to the baseline and started to serve.

"Practicing by yourself," casually noted the ghost. "You always wanted to have someone to hit with, you know. No one in your family played. Even on Christmas, on a day that ought to be spent with family . . ."

"I—what—"

"Yes," the ghost nodded sadly. "You were traumatized at the age of five. Now you are taking out that anger on your teammates, whom you are forcing to practice tomorrow on Christmas Day. Old habits _do_ die hard, don't they? Do you see, Mizuki Hajime?"

"This doesn't have anything to do with the practice tomorrow. We're practicing to get ahead of everyone else while they're partying and doing whatever it is teenage boys do. Not because I," he struggled to say it himself, "was traumatized at the age of five. It's a long stretch, though I will admit that I do look cute."

"It is quite severe then, I see," said ghost, and set a hand on Mizuki's shoulder. He inadvertently shuddered. The gesture would not have been so terrifying if Mizuki had not been imaging the real Fuji Syuusuke touching him, which made it genuinely frightening. "Do you not see anything?"

"I don't see it at all. I think that if anything, it'd have been more traumatizing. Like if I suddenly, um, looked like you."

"Says the one who wears purple angora, eh?" said the ghost who looked like Fuji.

"That's _not_ traumatizing. Purple angora is _so_ in. So, _so_ in."

"Well, whatever you say. The fact remains: you were traumatized. So traumatized that this single memory set in stone the feeling of remorse and neglect and regret in your five-year-old heart and kept itself warm by the warm beating of the human heart: subtle, but it was there all right."

"You don't need to be metaphorical about it."

"Excuse _me_, then."

"Um," said Mizuki. "I don't feel much traumatized, you know."

"The severity _is_ astonishing. The high level of self-denial is especially worrisome."

"Er," said Mizuki.

"Well, I suppose some are denser than others. Perhaps it'll take a few more scenes of horror to change your mind. This way," said the ghost, and they entered another porthole that led to a place Mizuki wished he knew.

More snow, more tennis courts, and Mizuki found himself at St. Rudolph.

"Today is Christmas Day, the present," said a voice besides him, and Mizuki saw Fuji Yuuta floating in the air, looking particularly fetching a black cloak that could be mistaken for a muumuu. The ghost of Fuji the elder was gone.

"Are you a ghost, too?" said Mizuki, a bit weary of it all. "You're not really Yuuta, right?"

"Yes, I am a ghost. Don't worry, I'm not _really_ Fuji Yuuta, though some may say that I am. I've come to show you the present consequences of the Christmas Day tennis practice." The ghost giggled, and Mizuki felt a tinge of terror strike at his heart. He made a mental note to ban giggling for Yuuta.

"Oh, God," said Mizuki, and slapped his forehead.

"Watch."

Up ahead were the regulars, wearing snow coats and scarves and hobo gloves amidst a flurry of tennis racquets and yellow tennis balls. Mizuki saw himself standing at the side of the court, yelling: "Ten more sets and I'll _maybe_ let you have a drink of water! Kaneda, I don't want to see you slacking off."

"I'm not _that_ cruel, am I?" Mizuki said.

"Well," said the ghost who looked a lot like Yuuta. "Well."

Suddenly, one of the players fell to the ground, his feet tangled by the boots. He panted for air while all the other players ran to him, although it took a while because it was difficult to run in the snow. He wore earmuffs and snow sloshed in his hair.

"Yuuta—he's unconscious!" called Atsushi, and he and Nomura picked up the boy and brought him to the side.

"Yuuta's going to faint?" Mizuki said, incredulous. "That's what's going to happen? I can't believe this. It's too surreal. This must be some sick joke."

"Do you want Yuuta to faint?" But it was somehow difficult for Mizuki to answer the question when the person asking it was the split image of Fuji Yuuta himself.

"No, I—I don't want that, but this is just a tennis practice. What could go wrong?"

"Ah, famous last words. I'm afraid that's still far ahead in the future, the repercussions. Well, I don't want to scar you too much. Not yet."

"I think you could at least admit that this is more than a stretch. I'd never make them practice in the snow."

"Oh, yeah?" said the ghost. He took out a portable screen that also functioned as a DVD player. He pressed a button and a tape was rewinding. It was stopped, and Mizuki watched himself say: _snow or sleet be damned_. "What do you say to that, eh?"

"Uh," said Mizuki. "Well that's taken out of context. I don't actually mean that. You know that—or maybe you don't because you're not really Yuuta, but anyway the point is that I'm not as you say I am. I'm not that mean and Yuuta's not going to faint. He's stronger than that."

Meanwhile, the regulars had gathered around the fallen body of their comrade. "He's not breathing!" said Yanagisawa and made one of his distinctly duck sounds.

"What do we do? Someone do CPR!"

The Mizuki of this universe sat on the sidelines and watched with a grin. He did nothing to help.

"Um," said Mizuki. "Well."

"And you don't do anything to help your teammate? Are you that cruel? Are you that heartless? Do you not see the error of your ways? Stop and face the music and for God's sake, cancel that practice. Are you convinced now?"

"This is nonsense. It's preposterous, to be quite honest. I don't see how this is credible at all, and I refuse to take part in this anymore. I want to go home. This—none of this is going to happen. I know it. It can't," he insisted, crossing his arms and looking away.

"You're not done. The worst is, ah, yet to come," smiled the ghost. "The future has yet to be seen. Are you scared of the future?"

"Never," declared Mizuki.

"Well, then. Are you ready?"

But he did not give Mizuki a chance to answer, as they slipped through the third and last porthole. Mizuki felt a little sick of the nausea he was experiencing from all the time-traveling.

--

A girl was wearing a purple top tied at the stomach with a golden sash. Her wrist jangled with the sound of gold bracelets. Her hair was auburn and curly and she wore big hoop earrings. She looked like a gypsy, and yet she looked exactly like Fuji's sister Yumiko, and that was what made Mizuki nearly scream. But he didn't, so he made a strange fuu-fuu sort of sound instead.

"I am the ghost of Christmas Future," said the ghost. "Don't you like my skirt?" And did a curtsy that made Mizuki feel very self-conscious, and he was not often self-conscious.

"Yes," he managed, though he was thinking that the dress material was cheap, and did people still honestly wear that sort of Bohemian style?

"Do you?" she repeated, and proceeded to giggle in a very girlish way that Mizuki did not want to associate with Fuji's sister.

"Uh, sure," he said.

"Good," and she smiled. "I'm the ghost of Christmas Future—oh, wait, did I say that already? Sorry, my bad. Say, would you like your fortune told?" She held out a deck of tarot cards, which seemed to levitate into the air without any prompting from her. "Give me your hand."

He did, though his gut was telling him otherwise, and as soon as her hand touched his, they were sucked into a porthole.

"Tricked you," she winked, once they'd reached their destination.

"Ugh," said Mizuki, crouching over and feeling very sick of these ghosts.

But the scene in front of him disturbed him. They were at an office building; in fact, Mizuki recognized it as one he often passed by when he went on his daily subway ride to school. They were on the twenty-fifth floor; there were forty floors total.

The office workers took no notice of the two newcomers, one a very flamboyantly dressed gypsy ghost, the other a teenage boy wearing purple angora.

"What are we here—" Mizuki said, but he was cut off.

"Yuuta's over here," she said, and led him over. They reached office cubicle number sixteen and stopped. In front of them was a middle-aged, myopic man who was on the verge of developing a beer belly.

"Y-Yuuta?" Mizuki weakly managed.

"Yes," nodded the ghost. "After Yuuta suffered a head concussion on December twenty-fifth in eighth grade, he was rushed to the hospital where it was discovered that he had a rare disease. It affects one in one million people. Incurable, but if he did not exercise, he would live. He had to quit tennis. Yuuta. Fuji Yuuta. Quit tennis. Inconceivable, yes, but that's what happened."

These were words of horror, but here he was listening to them. "No," breathed Mizuki.

"Oh, yes," said the ghost. "He had to quit the team. St. Rudolph lost its biggest star. They were no longer a force to be reckoned with. With Yuuta, they had a shimmering chance, but now they were nobodies. St. Rudolph quickly fell into obscurity."

"But wasn't there—surely he could have—"

"Yuuta went about his own life. He went to university, graduated, married rather early. He did nothing that distinguished him from everyone else. He was capable, but that was it. Yes, he became _average_. That dreaded word. He had two kids and a steady job by the age of thirty. His life fell into a sort of monotony. Got drunk twice a year, went to the dentist for a root canal, paid the bills, sent the kids off on their first dates, worked nine to five every day. To top it off, he's saving up for a pension, and he's going to retire at sixty-five. That's his life in a nutshell."

"Yuuta—no—it can't be—that's—that's—"

"Normal," the ghost finished for him. "Horrible, isn't it? And all because—"

At that moment, it all dawned upon Mizuki. He couldn't have Yuuta looking like this. It was too horrific to even describe it in words. He watched Yuuta sloppily eat lunch at his desk—and did he just pick his nose? Mizuki shed beautiful metaphorical tears and banged his fist on the ground.

"To imagine such a life for a person is devastating, is it not?"

"It can't be, it can't be. One tennis practice can't change a person into this. Those glasses! That old and wrinkly dress shirt and the tie—oh my God, it's too—too—I don't even know where to begin. And those shoes? Don't tell me—Birkenstocks. Yuuta, Yuuta, didn't I always tell you?" He fell to his knees and really cried. He could take anything, but _this_ was too much for his fashion-sensitive eyes. "Didn't I always tell you _not_ to wear the cheap kind? Expensive is expensive, but it's _classy_. I always told him, you know. Same thing for suits. Oh my God."

The ghost who looked like Yumiko but was dressed as a gypsy gave Mizuki no pity. "I hope you see it now. It took three scenes for you to understand, but as long as you understand—for if my brother truly turned out this way, the Fuji family would _never_ forgive you. I want you to be that much aware."

Mizuki looked up, startled. The way she said it—it was as if—_my brother_. It couldn't be. They weren't really the Fuji siblings, right? That was impossible. For one thing, they weren't dead. It was a lapse in thought. Maybe. Hopefully. He was thinking that he really must have suffered a lot of lapses over the last few hours.

"Ugh, my head," said Mizuki, and desperately wished he had an Advil. Or ten, for that matter.

The ghost smiled. Any trace of sibling camaraderie was gone. The ghost looked at the graying forty-five-year-old known as Fuji Yuuta as if she held not a relation to him. But did she really? Mizuki was suddenly terrified to find out the answer.

"I think I want to go home," he said softly.

"Do you realize now?" she asked him.

"Yes," and he truly seemed to have realized. His eyes were sunken and he shuddered as he braved one last look at Yuuta. "Yes."

--

Sitting at his desk, Mizuki Hagime was concentrating so hard on his work that he missed the ringing of his phone fourteen times. When he finally picked up, Yuuta was so flustered that Mizuki had to guess why he was calling.

Immediately on his guard, Yuuta said, "What, I can't call you just because?" Next to him, Yanagisawa and Atsushi were prompting him with hastily written cue cards that were aimed at softening Mizuki's 'cold outer shell of romantic cynicism' because 'underneath, he loves Christmas just as much as the rest of us.'

Pleasantly surprised, Mizuki chuckled. "Well, it's just that I'm usually the one calling you. But what is it?"

"Uh, uh, wait a second, Mizuki-san"—Yuuta struggled to read Yanagisawa's messy handwriting—"well, see the thing is that I wanted to, uh, humbly appeal to you from player, uh, to manager and uh—"

"_Well_," Mizuki, more than slightly amused, tapped his pencil against his hand. He could hear light sounds of struggle in the background. "Keep going."

God help me, thought Yuuta. Then he said aloud, "Well, see, the thing, uh, my sister's coming home . . . tomorrow. Yeah, um, tomorrow. So, oh, Merry Christmas by the way. Thought it _clearly_ says today, but mmph—"

Mizuki heard the sound of someone forcibly covering Yuuta's mouth and became even more amused. Twirling the phone cord around his finger, he lightly said, "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I could have sworn that your sister already _lived_ at your house. Or at least, she's been home since the beginning of the week."

"Oh, _shit_—" Mizuki heard on the other end, and he brought his lips to a ridiculously smug grin. "I mean—well, I haven't been, uh, home in a while and seeing as how I am but a devout serv—what the _hell_, Yana—" Again, Mizuki heard the sound of someone attempting to choke Yuuta.

"If you're calling about the practice tomorrow," Mizuki gently tapped the phone cord, "it's been deferred, so there's no need for you to call to ask for a cancellation. Unless, of course, you _really_ want to have it."

"What? Seriously?" Mizuki could hear the sound of celebration and yells of congratulations on the other end. "Oh, wow, Mizuki-san, I—"

"You're welcome, Yuuta."

"Yes, that's what I meant to say. Thank you—I was just sort of surprised and all. I didn't think you'd—well. Do you mind if I ask what made you change your mind? Um, you know, if it's not too much or anything."

Mizuki curled the phone cord around his finger. "Why don't we just call it, ah, divine intervention? Happy holidays, Yuuta." Somewhere in Istanbul, a very pretty boy was laughing with his owl puppet and listening to Nat King Cole records. Mizuki sighed.

"Oh, well, happy holidays to you, too. I guess I won't see you until school starts."

"Not quite so. I was just thinking that I'll reschedule our practice instead. Having it on New Year's Day sounds pretty good, don't you think?"


End file.
